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Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is located in a former sardine cannery and a former brewery on Cannery Row in Monterey, California, is one of the largest aquariums in the world. It has an annual attendance of 1.8 million and holds 35,000 plants and animals of 623 species.
There are many special exhibits presented — such as these jellyfish It includes a 33-foot (10-m) high aquarium for viewing California coastal marine life and a one million gallon aquarium. The aquarium, which is located near the large undersea Monterey Canyon, is also known world-wide as a research institution, especially in areas that deal with deep-sea marine life. Much of the biologic diversity and density seen in Monterey Bay is the result of cold and nutrient-rich water upwelling from the ocean depths via the canyon.
Sealife on exhibit includes stingrays, jellyfish, and sea otters, which can be viewed above and below the waterline. The MBA developed a circular aquarium called a Kreisel to keep fragile sea jellies. In addition, there is an exhibit featuring a kelp forest, the first ever successfully grown in captivity, in a multi-story tank at the center of the building, open to the elements at the surface. Visitors are able to inspect the creatures of the kelp forest at several levels in the building. It now is holding the world's first captive Great White Shark.
The building was designed by the architectural firm EHDD (Esherick Homsey Dodge and Davis) and opened on October 20, 1984. It high goal is to "stimulate interest, increase knowledge and promote stewardship of Monterey Bay and the world's ocean environment through innovative exhibits, public education and scientific research." Financial backing was provided by David Packard a co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, who not only provided financial support but worked at his blacksmithing forge in Big Sur to create exhibits for the aquarium, including the gears and pulleys of a simulated tide machine. His daughter, the marine biologist Julie Packard, is CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
A new wing opened in January 1996 expanded the Aquarium's emphasis on plant and animal communities of Monterey Bay, to exhibit the open-water ecology of Monterey's Outer Bay, including a school of 3000 of the anchovies that once were the foundation of Monterey's economy, swimming against the endless current of a toroidal tank.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and other programs in marine biology are connected with the Aquarium. Offshore is the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS) a Federally-protected marine area, the equivalent of a saltwater national park, off California's central coast.
Tickets for the Aquarium are available on-line, saving waits in line at the site.
The Aquarium appeared in the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where it appeared as the 'Cetacean Institute of Biology' in Sausalito. The main aquarium was overlaid with special effects to appear to be the tank home of two humpback whales.
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